“you know i would die for you, right?” it’s out of nowhere that leo says it, a stone hurled into the dead silence of the room, the knife that cuts the tension between them like a violin string pulled too-tight.
smiles, blithe and unconcerned, doesn’t look up from the scattered work on her desk, just murmurs, “the sentiment is nice, but please try not to. i’d miss you terribly.”
for just a moment, leo is angry, blindingly angry at the dismissal, doesn’t she know–
but she wouldn’t, would she.
because corrie tosses around declarations of love and loyalty like a currency she has too much of and the phrase i would die for you is near-valueless, all affection and appreciation but no weight.
but leo is a soldier, knows in excruciating intimacy the particular nature of that sacrifice, has felt the blood that should have been hers because of a loyalty bordering on devotion and a devotion bordering on love built on the belief that death would be better than inaction and–
the weight of the words differs.
it’s months, almost a year past when leo goes before the king and takes the fall for corrie’s half of the adderbrooke disaster, and she’s nobody’s favourite person for a long while, but it’s no sweat off her back while she’s still got a sword and a horse and her troops, so.
corrie studies her, sharp and conflicted, confusion tempered with a quiet sort of awe that leo does not know how to interpret until she remembers that–
corrie has grown up learning the intricate dance of the court in a family that does not permit missteps, that she lives and breathes and will die embroiled in legislation and treatises and negotiations. that everything about her is intricately constructed, every gesture, every word, every allowance, every smile accounted for in a repertoire of masks and personalities exchanged with the ease of a master.
leo realizes, as she fields letters and lectures and glares of polite aggression, that she has made a sacrifice that corrie can at last quantify, because death – death is nothing to a politician, a statistic in a distant war, extravagant funerals and successions, but reputation is everything. corrie cannot slip because to slip is to fall into irrelevance, into irredeemability, to lose something in the only game that will ever, ever matter.
corrie, with quiet conviction, says, “i would have taken responsibility. i was going to.”
and it sounds like a deferral, some expression of gratitude, maybe, except that leo’s starting to think that it’s not, not quite, not with this.
so she smiles, just a little, says, “i know.”
she doesn’t, not for certain, but there is a faith corrie seems to have in leo’s actions that reminds her of loyalty and devotion and love and it is enough.
“so–” corrie says, face harsh and twisted with misunderstanding and guilt, and leo just says, “so i figured you didn’t have to.”
would that we were easier people, she thinks sometimes, ruefully. that our lives and our deaths were just lives and deaths – that we thought they held the same meaning.
we can begin to understand between us, though.
